Although some in the mainstream press have divulged the association
between ASD and GMFUS, hardly anyone has disclosed the affiliations
between those running ASD and special interests, or similar connections
with the advisory board of GMFUS....

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security from 2005 to 2009
Chertoff Group co-founder (risk-management and security consulting)Senior of counsel at the Washington, DC law firm Covington and Burling
Chairman of BAE Systems 2012-2015.
Co-Author of the PATRIOT Act.
Endorsed Hillary Clinton.

Michael McFaul

Apecial asst to president and senior
director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security
Council at the White House from 2009 to 2012, then U.S. ambassador to
the Russian Federation from 2012–14. Senior fellow at Freeman Spogli
Institute for Int. Studies. Peter and Helen Bing senior fellow at the
Hoover Institution. NBC analyst, WAPO columnist.

Bill Kristol

Weekly standard editor, Facebook fake-news arbiter
Served on the board of the Project for the New American Century (1997–2005) and the Foreign Policy Initiative (2009–17)
Chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle (GWB administration)
Endorsed Hillary Clinton

Michael Morrell

Former acting CIA director 2011, 2012-13 and as deputy director and director for Intelligence.
Beacon Global Strategies as a senior counselor since November 2013
Played a central role in the United States’ fight against terrorism and
was one of the leaders involved in the location and capture of Osama
Bin LadenWrote an op-ed in the NYT endorsing Hillary ClintonProposed giving weapons to Ukraine in response to alleged hacking of US election.

David KramerFormer senior director Human Rights and Democracy, McCain Institute for International LeadershipFreedom House – former president.Served 8 years in U.S. Department of
State under GWB. Advisory council for GWB Presidential Center’s Human
Freedom Project.
On board of directors at Halifax International Security Forum. Worked at CSIS in 90s.Was reportedly directed to meet with Steele in London by McCain
Was a senior fellow at the Project for a New American Century
International Advisory Council at the Center for European Policy Analysis
In addition, Kramer is a member of the Ukraine Today media organization’s International Supervisory Council.
In 2016 Kramer argued that the Minsk II peace agreement should be scrapped and western sanctions on Russia maintained.
Has spoken out against Obama and Clinton in the past.

Toomas IlvesElected president of the Republic of Estonia in 2006 and in 2011
Worked on ICT for the UN
Former Vice president of European Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee
Former Foreign affairs minister and ambassador of the Republic of Estonia to US and CanadaIs World Economic Forum co-chair. Fellow at the Hoover Institution

James Stavridis

US Navy (ret.) commander of European Command and as Supreme Allied Commander, Europe from 2009 to 2013.
Chairman of US Naval Institute Board of Directors.
U.S. Southern Command in Miami 2006–09 and Enterprise Carrier Strike
Group, in Arabian Gulf for Op. Iraqi Freedom and Op Enduring Freedom
from 2002–04.Former NATO Commander

Mike Rogers

Former Congressman, officer in the Army,
and FBI special agent. Former chair of U.S. House Intelligence Committee
as leader on cybersecurity and national security policy, oversaw the
intelligence agencies’ $70 billion budget.CNN national security
commentator, hosts and produces CNN’s “Declassified.”Chief Security
Adviser to ATandT, on board of IronNet Cybersecurity and MITRE
Corporation, advises Next Century Corp. and Trident Capital.
Distinguished Fellow and Trustee at Center for the Study of the
Presidency and Congress, Senior Fellow at Belfer Center, Harvard.Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Committee on Energy and Commerce. Introduced CISPA.

Nicole WongFormer U.S. chief tech officer for Obama.
Previously Google’s vice president and deputy general counsel, and
Twitter’s legal director for products. Chairs board of Friends of Global
Voices. On boards of WITNESS, the Mozilla Foundation, advisor to the
School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley,
Harvard Business School Digital Initiative,the DNC Cybersecurity
advisory board, Refactor Capital, and Albright Stonebridge Group.Associate at Perkins Coie LLP in 1997 and was named a partner in 2000.
Wong represented media clients including the Los Angeles Times, The Walt
Disney Company, Microsoft, and Amazon.com before joining Google.

Kori Schake

Former White House National Security
Council, Department of Defense for the Office of the Secretary and Joint
Chiefs of Staff, State Department for the Policy Planning Staff.In
2008, Kori was senior policy advisor on the McCain–Palin campaign.
Research fellow at the Hoover Institution. Co-authored “Warriors and Citizens: American Views of Our Military” with Jim Mattis. Teaches at Stanford, contributing editor covering national security and international affairs at The Atlantic, columnist for Foreign Policy magazine,contributor to War on the Rocks.
Contributed to conceptualizing and budgeting for continued
transformation of defense practices, the most significant realignment of
U.S. military forces and bases around the world since 1950, creating
NATO’s Allied Command Transformation and the NATO Response Force, and
recruiting and retaining coalition partners for operations in
Afghanistan and Iraq.

Julianne Smith

Deputy national security advisor to Joe
Biden (2012 to 2013), acting national security advisor to Biden in 2013,
principal director for European and NATO policy in the Office of the
Secretary of Defense in the Pentagon.
Senior fellow and director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.Contributor to Foreign Policy.

Jake Sullivan

Obama admin national security advisor to
Joe Biden, director of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State,
deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He was the
senior policy advisor on Secretary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
He is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace and Martin R. Flug visiting lecturer in law at Yale Law School.–
Was spoken of as a front-runner for the position of U.S. National
Security Advisor under a Hillary Clinton administration prior to her
electoral defeat............. There are quite a few Democratic party figures, people that worked in
the state department, people that endorsed Clinton, Foreign Policy
publication contributors, people that have worked on the National
Security Committee and those with ties to the US intelligence community
and NATO.

I can’t speak for others, but personally, when it comes to
considering all the affiliations, associations, influences and
endorsements – I struggle to see how such a collective can be expected
to carry out the role of an impartial arbiter on the topic of
disinformation.

While they remain opaque on what they’ve classify as “Russian
influence” and “disinformation”, there’s little reason to assume the
results of their efforts will inherently be credible.

If the petition is granted, she would be responsible for settling
Lynda’s debts and doling out the kids’ inheritance. Lynda did not leave a
will, and the petition filed does not indicate what her estate is
worth, records show.

If Deschamps’ petition is granted, she could charge the estate a fee
for settling it for the kids, though that fee would be subject to a
judge’s review, according to Florida probate lawyer Robert Wolf, who is
not involved in the case.

Deschamps filed the petition on the grounds she is “caring for a 50
percent minor beneficiary” — Zachary — according to court papers.

But the source said Deschamps was the one who had Zachary
involuntarily committed on Friday. The state cannot hold minors for
observation more than 12 hours unless there is a medical reason. It is
unclear if he has been released.

Deschamps had six months from Lynda’s Nov. 1 death to file the
petition, and her attorney Audra Simovitz called the decision to file
the day after the slaughter “appropriate.”

Flynn’s attorneys should begin receiving the required disclosures from the special counsel’s office any time now, andthere is reason to believethere will be bombshells.

Prosecutors
working for Mueller charged Flynn with lying to FBI agents on November
30, 2017. He pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements to
the FBI before federal judge Rudolph Contreras the next day. Contreras
was recused from
the case less than a week later -- likely because he served on the
special court that allowed the FBI to surveil the Trump campaign based
on a FISA application that relied heavily on the unverified anti-Trump
dossier.

Flynn's
alleged crime occurred on Jan. 24, 2017, when two FBI agents went to the
White House to question him about telephone conversations he'd had with
Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the transition in late
December 2016.

This is why Flynn's guilty plea remains one of D.C.'s greatest mysteries. The FBI reportedly
did not think Flynn had even done anything wrong in the phone calls to
the Russian ambassador -- so what was there to lie about?

But as Powell pointed out in The Daily Caller,"people who are innocent enter guilty pleas every day.

"They simply can no longer withstand the unimaginable stress of a
criminal investigation. They and their families suffer sheer exhaustion
in every form — financial, physical, mental, and emotional. Add in a
little prosecutorial duress — like the threat of indicting your son —
and, presto, there’s a guilty plea."

The
updated version added one sentence specifying that the evidence the
government must produce “includes producing, during plea negotiations,
any exculpatory evidence in the government’s possession.”

According to Margot Cleveland, a lawyer who writes for The Federalist, the revised version is significant because "it indicates that if the government did not provide Flynn material evidence during plea negotiations, Flynn has grounds to withdraw his plea."

Given
Sullivan's history of holding abusive prosecutors in check, Mueller’s
vaunted "legal pitbull" Andrew Weissmann may have reason to be
concerned.

Weissmann has a
history of prosecutorial misconduct dating back to 1997, when he was
officially reprimanded by a judge in the Eastern District of New York
for withholding evidence, as Sara Carter recently reported.

Weissmann and another Enron Task Force member also reportedly terrorized an Arthur Andersen partner into pleading guilty unnecessarily.

Weissmann and Caldwell made Duncan testify at length against Arthur Andersen when they
destroyed the company and 85,000 jobs only to be
reversed by
a unanimous Supreme Court three years later. Turns out, the “crime”
they “convinced” Mr. Duncan to plead guilty to was not a crime at all.
The court allowed Duncan to
withdraw his plea. And, that was not the only Weissmann-induced plea to be withdrawn either. Just ask
Christopher Calger.

As Powell
points out, former FBI director James Comey admitted to the Senate
Intelligence Committee last May that he leaked a memo detailing his
conversation with President Trump deliberately to “trigger” Robert
Mueller’s investigation. Since Flynn's guilty plea, we've learned that
that memo was classified.

Meanwhile,
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz is expected to release his
highly anticipated report on the FBI and DOJ's investigation into
Hillary Clinton's email server within the next six weeks. Horowitz is
credited with discovering the Strzok-Page emails revealing the agents
working on an "insurance policy" with Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

Comment:
Everyone agrees no computer is 100% safe. Simple solution: Election
data such as voter roles, registration, etc., should be handled as they
were before computers existed. This will save taxpayers billions. The parasitic "cyber security industry" (eg,
CrowdStrike) will have to get along without US taxpayer handouts............

For
the American spy agency, which has invested billions of [taxpayer] dollars
developing an arsenal of weapons that have been used against the Iranian
nuclear program, North Korea’s missile launches and Islamic State
militants, what is unfolding across the world amounts to a digital
nightmare. It was as if the Air Force lost some of its most
sophisticated missiles and discovered an adversary was launching them
against American allies — yet refused to respond, or even to acknowledge
that the missiles were built for American use.

In
the past two months [2017], attackers have retrofitted the agency’s more
recent weapons to steal credentials from American companies.Cybercriminals have used them to pilfer digital currency....

The [Tuesday, June 2017] attacks inflicted
enormous collateral damage, taking down some 2,000 global targets in
more than 65 countries, including Merck, the American drug giant,
Maersk, the Danish shipping company, and Rosneft, the Russian state
owned energy giant. The attack so crippled operations at a subsidiary of
Federal Express that trading had to be briefly halted for FedEx stock....

“We
now have actors, like North Korea and segments of the Islamic State,
who have access to N.S.A. tools who don’t care about economic and other
ties between nation states,” said Jon Wellinghoff, the former chairman
of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission."...

Current
and former agency officials say the Shadow Brokers disclosures, which
began in August 2016, have been catastrophic for the N.S.A., calling
into question its ability to protect potent cyberweapons and its very
value to national security. The agency regarded as the world’s leader in
breaking into adversaries’ computer networks failed to protect its own....

The
Snowden trauma led to theinvestment of millions of dollars in new
technology and tougher rules to counter what the government calls the
insider threat. But N.S.A. employees say that with thousands of
employees pouring in and out of the gates,and the ability to store a
library’s worth of data in a device that can fit on a key ring,it is impossible to preventpeople from walking out with secrets....

Mr.
Williams said it may be years before the “full fallout” of the Shadow
Brokers breach is understood. Even the arrest of whoever is responsible for the leaks may not end them, he said — because the sophisticated
perpetrators may have built a “dead man’s switch” to release all
remaining files automatically upon their arrest.

“We’re
obviously dealing with people who have operational security knowledge,”
he said. “They have the whole law enforcement system and intelligence
system after them. And they haven't been caught.""...

as an especially productive way to spy on foreign targets. The
intelligence collection is often automated, with malware implants —
computer code designed to find material of interest — left sitting on
the targeted system for months or even years, sending files back to the
N.S.A.

The
same implant can be used for many purposes: to steal documents, tap
into email, subtly change data or become the launching pad for an
attack. T.A.O.’s most public success was an operation against Iran
called Olympic Games, in which implants in the network of the Natanz
nuclear plant caused centrifuges enriching uranium to self-destruct. The
T.A.O. was also critical to attacks on the Islamic State and North
Korea.

It was this arsenal that the Shadow Brokers got hold of, and then began to release."...
..................

Most
of the code was designed to break through network firewalls and get
inside the computer systems of competitors like Russia, China and Iran.
That, in turn, allows the N.S.A. to place “implants” in the system,
which can lurk unseen for years and be used to monitor network traffic
or enable a debilitating computer attack.

According
to these experts, the coding resembled a series of “products” developed
inside the N.S.A.’s highly classified Tailored Access Operations unit,
some of which were described in general terms in documents stolen three
years ago by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor now living
in Russia.

But
the code does not appear to have come from Mr. Snowden’s archive, which
was mostly composed of PowerPoint files and other documents that
described N.S.A. programs. The documents released by Mr. Snowden and his
associates contained no actual source code used to break into the
networks of foreign powers.

Whoever
obtained the source code apparently broke into either the top-secret,
highly compartmentalized computer servers of the N.S.A. or other servers
around the world that the agency would have used to store the files.
The code that was published on Monday dates to mid-2013, when, after Mr.
Snowden’s disclosures, the agency shuttered many of its existing
servers and moved code to new ones as a security measure....

Around
the same time, WikiLeaks declared that it had a full set of the files —
it did not say how it had obtained them — and would release them all in
the future. The “Shadow Brokers” had said they would auction them off
to the highest bidder....

The
N.S.A. would say nothing on Tuesday about whether the coding released
was real or where it came from. Its public affairs office did not
respond to inquiries....

There
are other theories, including one that some unknown group was trying to
impersonate hackers working for Russian or other intelligence agencies.
Impersonation is relatively easy on the internet, and it could take
considerable time to determine who is behind the release of the code.

The
Shadow Brokers first emerged online on Saturday, creating accounts on
sites like Twitter and Tumblr and announcing plans for an auction. The
group said that “we give you some Equation Group files free” and that it
would auction the best ones. The Equation Group is a code name that
Kaspersky Labs, a Russian cybersecurity firm, has given to the N.S.A.

While
still widely considered the most talented group of state-sponsored
hackers in the world, the N.S.A. is still recovering from Mr. Snowden’s
disclosures; it has spent hundreds of millions of dollars reconfiguring
and locking down its systems.

“From an operational standpoint, this is not a catastrophic leak,”
Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at the International Computer Science
Institute in Berkeley, Calif., wrote on the Lawfare blog on Tuesday.

But he added that “the big picture is a far scarier one.” In the weeks
after Mr. Snowden fled Hawaii, landing in Hong Kong before ultimately
going to Russia, it appears that someone obtained that source code.
That, he suggested, would be an even bigger security breach for the
N.S.A. than Mr. Snowden’s departure with his trove of files.

However,
the fact that the code is dated from 2013 suggests that the hackers’
access was cut off around then, perhaps because the agency imposed new
security measures."........................

"He
has long held a high-level clearance and for a time worked with the
N.S.A.’s premier hacking unit, called Tailored Access Operations, which
breaks into the computer networks of foreign countries and which
developed the hacking tools later obtained by the Shadow Brokers.
According to one person briefed on the investigation, Mr. Martin was
able to obtain some of the hacking tools by accessing a digital library
of such material at the N.S.A....

Mr. Martin, an enigmatic loner who according to acquaintances frequently
expressed his excitement about his role in the growing realm of
cyberwarfare, has insisted that he got in the habit of taking material
home so he could improve his skills and be better at his job, according
to these officials. He has explained how he took the classified material
but denied having knowingly passed it to anyone else....

The
material the F.B.I. found in his possession added up to “many
terabytes” of information, according to court papers, which would make
it by far the largest unauthorized leak of classified material from the
classified sector. That volume dwarfs the hundreds of thousands of
N.S.A. documents taken by Edward J. Snowden in 2013 and exceeds even the
more voluminous Panama Papers, leaked records of offshore companies
obtained by a German newspaper in 2015, which totaled 2.6 terabytes. One
terabyte of data is equal to the contents of about one million books.F.B.I.
agents on the case, advised by N.S.A. technical experts, do not believe
Mr. Martin is fully cooperating, the officials say. He has spoken
mainly through his lawyers, James Wyda and Deborah Boardman of the
federal public defender’s office in Baltimore....

In
interviews, officials described how the Martin case has deeply shaken
the secret world of intelligence, from the N.S.A.’s sprawling campus at
Fort Meade, Md., to the [Obama] White House. They expressed astonishment that
Mr. Martin managed to take home such a vast collection of classified
material over at least 16 years, undetected by security officers at his
workplaces, including the N.S.A., the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence and Pentagon offices. And they are deeply concerned that
some of the mountain of material may, by whatever route, have reached
hackers or hostile intelligence services.

Investigators
discovered the hacking tools, consisting of computer code and
instructions on how to use it, in the thousands of pages and dozens of
computers and data storage devices that the F.B.I. seized during an Aug.
27 [2016] raid on Mr. Martin’s modest house in suburban Glen Burnie, Md. More
secret material was found in a shed in his yard and in his car,
officials said.

The
search came after the Shadow Brokers leak set off a panicked hunt at
the N.S.A. Mr. Martin attracted the F.B.I.’s attention by posting
something on the internet that was brought to the attention of the
N.S.A. Whatever it was — officials are not saying exactly what — it
finally set off an alarm.

The
release of the N.S.A.’s hacking tools, even though they dated to 2013,
is extraordinarily damaging, said Dave Aitel, a former agency employee
who now runs Immunity Inc., an information security company.

“The
damage from this release is huge, both to our ability to protect
ourselves on the internet and our ability to provide intelligence to
policy makers and the military,” Mr. Aitel said.

The
N.S.A.’s hacking into other countries’ networks can be for defensive
purposes: By identifying rivals’ own hacking methods, the agency can
recognize and defend against them, he said. And other countries, with
some of the N.S.A.’s tools now in hand, can study past hacks and
identify the attacker as the N.S.A., learn how to block similar
intrusions, or even decide to retaliate, Mr. Aitel said.

Mr.
Martin, 51, a Navy veteran who was completing a Ph.D. in information
systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County,has worked for several of the contracting companies that help staff the nation's security establishment.After stints at the Computer Sciences
Corporation and Tenacity Solutions, where he was assigned to the Office
of the Director of National Intelligence, he joined Booz Allen Hamilton
in 2009. He worked on that firm’s N.S.A. contract until 2015, when he
was moved to a different Pentagon contract in the area of offensive
cyberwarfare."...image from NY Times

A
Broward County sheriff spokeswoman said the investigation is ongoing
and declined to comment further. The public defender’s office, which is
representing Mr. Cruz, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Mr.
Cruz faces 17 charges of premeditated murder for the attack on Marjory
Stoneman Douglas High School. Since the killings, neighbors and
classmates have described disturbing behavior by Mr. Cruz, including an
obsession with weapons.

The officers’ observations were included in the arrest report of
Antonio Moses Fernandez, 19, of San Jose, who is accused of throwing a
metal barrier into a police skirmish line following the Trump rally June
2 outside the San Jose Convention Center. Fernandez made his first
court appearance Tuesday and was charged with felony assault on a peace
officer with a deadly weapon and misdemeanor resisting, delaying or
obstructing an officer, according to court documents....

“When there’s an assault on a police officer, we don’t have any tolerance for that,” prosecutor Chris Boscia said.

So far Fernandez is the only person to be criminally charged stemming
from the violence that erupted outside Trump’s rally last week. Three
other people were also arrested the day of the rally, including Ahmed
Abdirahman, 19, of Santa Clara, and Robert Trillo, 18, both on suspicion
of felony assault with a deadly weapon, and Michael Kitaigorodsky, 19,
of San Jose, on suspicion of refusal to disperse.

Three juveniles were also arrested, police said Wednesday. A
16-year-old and a 17-year-old, both of San Jose, were arrested for
felony assault with a deadly weapon. A 16-year-old Milpitas resident was
arrested for misdemeanor battery. Their names were not released
because they are minors. The attacks were seen in television reports....

One of the undercover officers wrote that he was “monitoring
protesters from within the crowd” and estimated there were 250
protesters gathered behind barricades at 6 p.m.,about one hour before
Trump’s scheduled arrival. That number grew as the evening wore on.

The undercover officers say they witnessed Fernandez pick up a second
barrier and then put it down. One witnessed Fernandez remove his shirt
and use it to cover his face. One of the undercover officers eventually
tackled Fernandez and held him down until uniformed officers arrived to
make the arrest. During a police interview, Fernandez denied throwing the barrier into the police line.

“We are not an ‘occupying force’ and cannot reflect the chaotic
tactics of the protesters,” Garcia told reporters. Unless a victim’s
life was in peril or the violence was “spiraling out of control,” he
said,

He also said the 250 police weren’t enough to
control about 400 protesters.

Following the rally several videos appeared on various social media sites and captured some of the attacks. A police task force is reviewing video evidence of the assaults and
other possible crimes from the protest. Monday the police department
announced more arrests were “imminent,” but so far no additional arrests
have been announced.
San Jose police are asking anyone with information about physical
assaults at the Trump rally or videos of the violence to contact their
Assaults Unit at 408-277-4161 or leave a tip with Silicon Valley Crime
Stoppers at 408-947-STOP (7867) or svcrimestoppers.org." image from Mercury News